International talent launches back home

VIOLINIST Lizzy Welsh is holding a concert at the Old Church on the Hill next weekend to celebrate her debut album The Target Has Disappeared.

The well-travelled classical musician went to school in Castlemaine which is where she first picked up the instrument.

“I grew up in Harcourt in the 90s,” she said. “It was a lucky time to be growing up in the region because there was a push from the State Government to provide primary school students with the opportunity to learn instrumental music.

“The music teacher at my school, Castlemaine North Primary, was a violin teacher. So, I got the opportunity to learn a string instrument at that age, which was heavily subsidised.

“So, it was affordable, accessible and we were able to hire instruments through the program, which made it much more affordable again.”

Welsh said she immediately took to the instrument and went on to play in local and state orchestras before heading overseas to further her career.

“I went and studied in Germany,” she said. “I then moved to Melbourne and spent a few years working as a professional freelance violinist, before I did a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Queensland Conservatorium.”

After longing for home Welsh said it was starting a family and the pandemic that helped convince her partner to move back to the area.

“Since COVID there are different expectations of how people work,” she said. “My husband works mainly from home now so that made it possible for us to move back.

“My parents still live here, and we have lots of friends who’ve moved back here, it’s just a really great place to raise kids.”

It was after working with a local violin maker Welsh got the idea for her debut album.

“My friend Steve Gregory who lives in Spring Gully is a violin maker who said he wanted to make a baroque violin,” she said.

“That got me interested in early music, but then also made me think, what if we wrote new music now with the composers I’d already been working with? But for the older style baroque violin.

“That’s what I did my doctoral research in and during that time I commissioned a lot of my friends who were composers to write new work for the baroque violin.

“We recorded and sent an album out. I was really lucky the first people I sent it to were a record label based in Basel in Switzerland.”

That label, Discreet Editions were quick to sign Welsh up and release The Target Has Disappeared.

Welsh will be performing the album at the Old Church on the Hill on Saturday 8 July with tickets available at the door or for sale via trybooking.com/CIZTW.